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About Michael J. Miller

Miller, who was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine from 1991 to 2005, authors this blog for PC Magazine to share his thoughts on PC-related products. No investment advice is offered in this blog. All duties are disclaimed. Miller works separately for a private investment firm which may at any time invest in companies whose products are discussed in this blog, and no disclosure of securities transactions will be made.

Living With Android Jelly Bean: More than Just a Point Release

With the Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) update to the unlocked HSPA+ version of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus rolling out and the upgrade coming out for other devices soon, I thought I'd take another look at it. Since Google announced Jelly Bean at its Google I/O conference two weeks ago, I've been using the new upgrade on a Galaxy Nexus and I have to say I'm quite impressed. This may be just a point release, but the improvements in voice recognition and search in particular are noteworthy.

The biggest new feature is probably Google Now, which adds a variety of personal assistant tools to the search engine and voice recognition features in order to give you more personalized information.

You start Google Now by swiping up from the bottom of the screen, and it presents a variety of information on little "cards" in a stack.

It defaults to displaying the local weather and information about local attractions. As you use it more, it is supposed to learn about you, doing things such as routing you to your next appointment, displaying the traffic conditions, and updating your flight status. Much of this sounds great, but in practice, it hasn't done that much for me so far because I commute by train, which it currently doesn't seem to know anything about, and don't keep my calendar in Google. It does collect your local search results in stacks of cards, which is useful and should improve over time, so I'll be watching for that.

However, even the basic voice recognition parts have been surprisingly good. When I first got the device, I tested it against Apple's Siri and liked it then, but the more I use it, the better I like it.

When you are in Google Now, you just say "Google" and then ask a question or ask it to do something for you. Like Siri, it is good at dialing numbers from an address book, setting alarms or reminders, and checking the weather.

But compared with the current generation of Siri, it's just a broader product. It does a great job of directly answering questions such as "Who won the All-Star Game?," "When do the Cubs play?," and "When do the Olympics start?" without showing search engine results, though you can always pull those up. It is also capable of performing calculations. Of course, it doesn't know every answer, in which case it consults the search engine, but I was still impressed by the quality of the voice recognition. It simply works better for me than the competing choices.

Still, as much as I like the improved voice recognition, it is far from perfect. Saying "Google" turns on the voice recognition from Google Now, but not from elsewhere in the interface, though touching the microphone on the search bar always works.

Unlike the Samsung Galaxy S III, whose voice features I found generally worse, you can't use voice to turn phone features on and off. While it is pretty good, it does get confused sometimes, particularly in noisy environments, and it really isn't suitable for long dictation.

In general, voice works by sending your words to the cloud and getting the results back. In the Settings app, there is an option for offline speech recognition, so it enables voice input while you are offline, though it can then only do things that are on the local device.

To me, the combination of Google Now and improved voice recognition is a big deal. It can really change the way you interact with a phone. In many respects, it makes the search engine appear less prominent by just giving you the answers instead. That is one of the great things about Siri, but it's a bit surprising to see Google take it even further. I'll be curious to see if or how Google treats advertising messages on Google Now going forward.

The other changes in Jelly Bean don't stand out so much, but are still good improvements. Google talked about "Project Butter," designed to make the interface work a bit smoother. There's not one thing that jumps out, but everything does indeed seem to work a little faster. It's subtle, but a nice improvement. The Notifications screen, which pulls down from the top, now offers some larger notifications, like email sender information, which I find quite useful. You also have a bit more control over how notifications work.

Although Google said that Chrome will be the new default browser, on the device I tested, the old Android browser and the new Chrome browser were present. In general, Chrome is a big improvement, with faster JavaScript rendering and the ability to sync locations about multiple Chrome instances (including Chrome on a desktop). Note that Adobe Flash is no longer supported. This was previously mentioned, but it is a bit of a disappointment as there still are sites that use it heavily.

The recent upgrades to Google Play have made the store a much better place to get music, movies, and magazines. Jelly Bean is optimized to stream your media from the cloud, rather than actually storing info on your local device, though there is a buried option to copy music and videos to the local device. Everything you buy from Google Play is synchronized with your account and when you sign in on a new device, it is all synced. (Note that you'll have to manually download the things you want, including the apps.) One good thing compared with iTunes is that you can continue to attach the device to a Windows PC and copy your data directly.

A big question facing Jelly Bean will be how quickly devices actually get the upgrade, particularly given the slowness of the Ice Cream Sandwich upgrades. It is supposed to be out for the Galaxy Nexus, the Nexus S, the Motorola Xoom, and Nexus 7 tablet (which will come loaded with Jelly Bean) by mid-July, but we don't have any dates on any other devices.

Overall, I'd say Jelly Bean positions Android quite well in the mobile OS market. Apple continues to have the largest ecosystem with the most applications and peripherals, but what we've seen so far from iOS 6 has been very incremental. We'll have to wait a few months to see whether the company has more up its sleeve, such as improvements for Siri.

Apple's control over its ecosystem means anyone who bought an iPhone after the 3GS or an iPad after the iPad 2 can upgrade (though older devices don't get all the new features), something Apple's competitors must envy. Microsoft is making big changes to Windows Phone 8 for this fall, but thus far has really only shown developer features, not consumer ones. It has said that existing devices won't be able to move to the new OS, only an interim version, though it will design Windows Phone 8 for easier over-the-air-updates. Google is in a middle ground with Jelly Bean, seemingly relying on the whims of both the device makers and the carriers. But from a user perspective, even though it doesn't appear like a huge change from Ice Cream Sandwich, its improved voice recognition system, Google Now, and faster UI make it feel like a big deal.

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